England "Guys Trip" Day 4

We called a cab to the hotel for a ride to the Bristol Airport. It was right around rush hour so he said he'd take us on some back roads to avoid Bristol and all of the traffic. The ride was just over 30 minutes and he really did take some back roads. England has allot of small one lane roads that handle 2 way traffic at 30 to 40 mph.

When we got to the Airport we walked over to the car rental agency to pickup a car that Mike had reserved. It was a VW something (not a bug). It has been 26 years since I drove in England, but I did drive here for over a year and had my British driver's license, so I drove. I told Mike "I will never get mad no matter how many times you tell me to stay to the left".

I brought my Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS to use in the car. I had bought the European maps so we put the mount on the windshield, fired it up, and told it to take us to Stonehenge. I drove very conservatively as we exited the airport. We still didn't want to go through Bristol traffic, and the GPS seemed to not want that either. It had us turn South West and away from Bristol.

The first few miles felt ok, but very soon we were into small villages and small roads. Little villages often have choke points where the road narrows to one lane. There is seldom a traffic light controlling the narrow spot. There is usualy just a couple of warning signs and the drivers take turns. But unlike America where once traffic got going in one way, it would just keep going till it ran out, the british seem to have a real sense of fair play. About 4 cars would go, then stop and let some come the other way, then back and forth very courteously.

I was worried about my first big roundabout, and big unmarked roundabouts. Sometimes you can get 2 or 3 roundabouts all chained together. The GPS would tell us to enter the roundabout and take the 3rd exit, but it wasn't always clear just what counted as an exit, and if it wasn't marked, you can get lost quick. We quickly developed a routine where Mike would watch the GPS and figure out roughly what degree to exit at, then figure out in real life which that meant. We still missed one now and then, either having to go around the roundabout again, or U-turn, or even take a different route.

As we got near Stonehenge we wound up on a road out across some farm country. Mike commented that he could see what the GPS was doing, but that we were driving parallel to a major highway only a mile or two away. But the road was fine and the scenery was great. We must have been near a military base because we saw allot of "Tank Crossing" signs and some big military helicopters in the air.

We arrived at Stonehenge without much problem and paid for the audio tour. The grounds are fenced off with a big 9 foot high fence. But many people didn't want to pay to get in so they would cross the road and try to poke a camera through the fence for a picture. We walked through a tunnel under the road and followed the trail in a big circle around the stones. The weather was chilly and a stiff breeze blew, but we had mostly sunshine and only partly cloudy.

Our next stop was the town of Yate where I lived for a few months. It was maybe 30 miles North, so we programmed the GPS and headed off. Again, Mike said we were kind of zig zagging through the countryside rather than taking the big highways. I was kind of glad not to be in heavy traffic so we kept going. We tried to stop for lunch at a cute little Pub in a small town that claimed to have "The best homecooked meals", but it was only 11:15 and didn't open untill 11:30. So we kept going.

Finally at 12:00 we were going through a large town and I was starving so we parked on the side of the road and looked for somewhere to eat. I don't remember having such trouble finding food, but we sure did. A pub we saw didn't serve food, and the classic Fish'n'chips shops didn't seem to be anywhere. We walked into a small shopping district and saw a little cafe called "The Grotto" or something. The inside was decorated somewhat like a cave. I think we got pasty's and chips or something, but it turned out their kitchen consisted mostly of a freezer, can opener, and a microwave. It wasn't good, but it was filling.

We continued to Yate and then to 47 Blaisdon where I used to live. We took a few pictures then headed to a little village called Iron Acton that I used to love. The GPS took us out of town the way that we used to ride our bikes, then around a small road where we had to cross the highway, and down toward Iron Acton. We passed over a bridge that we used to sit on and look at the wildflowers on the hills. We didn't stay in Iron Acton, but just drove slowly through.

Our next destination was Stroud. Mike wanted to visit the Cotswolds area, and Stroud was a town where I lived in that area. The GPS took us on another off the beaten path trip, and down some little one lane roads with hedges to either side. I had forgotton all of those tiny roads, and especially the stone fences with hedges on top. Sometimes your mirrors are brushing hedges on either side, and you're on a 2 way road. I quickly adopted a strategy to slow way down at corners, and if we met another car, I would find a wide spot, pull hard to the left side, then stop and let the british driver pass me. They are much better at it than me, and we did OK with that. One time we met a large delivery truck. I pulled over but was sure there wasn't enough room. He hardly slowed down and zipped right around us without touching anything. There was less than 2 inches between us.

We found the house where I lived in Stroud and took a picture, but it's a big town and I don't remember it being all that pretty so we didn't try to walk around. Instead we headed for a little town that I remember and that the Fodors guide reccomended named Painswick. It is set on a hill with home all of the same stone and very close together. Parking was hard to come by, but we found some near the village Church.

We walked around Painswick for a bit and went into a rock collector shop that was going out of business. The guy had a very odd collection of stuff, but nothing we wanted. On one lawn we saw a rabbit cage on a lawn. The cage had no bottom so the rabbits nibbled at the lawn. That's one way to mow your lawn I guess. I remember visiting an elderly lady in Painswick that lived in a house named AppleGarth. Everyone in these small towns names their homes. I've always loved that. But we found a house named AppleGarth but it doesn't look anything like I remember.

Our next stop was the town of Cirencester. We put it in the GPS and started around some of the little roads through Painswick. As we drove, the GPS announced it as recalculating because we had missed a turn. We looked at each other and wondered "What Turn?", because we saw no other roads. We followed the directions swinging around town and then came back down the same road. This time I went very slow, and at the point where the GPS showed the road going off to the right, all we saw was a small opening in the wall. We stopped and got out to look, and sure enough, it was a road. We looked at each other and shrugged, then got back in and headed through the gap barely fitting.

The road was unpaved, or barely paved, or realy needing repair, but it bumped and thumped us down the hill, across the creek at the bottom, and up the other side. Calling it a one lane road is being generous. Mike took down the GPS and said we better get rid of it before it kills us. He started fiddling through the settings and after a few minutes he sai "Clay you have this thing in Mountain Bike Mode."

It was set to avoid all highway and travel the shortest distance. No wonder we kept getting sent down tiny roads. We stopped to fiddle with in, and take some pictures back toward Painswick, then headed off again. We had about 4 miles on the little road and saw some beautiful scenery. At one point about 2 miles down the road we saw a huge home with lovely grounds and a kids play set. The house looked very new, so someone must have bought the land and built there just for the privacy the road afforded.

Sure enough, as soon as we got near a major road, we turned onto it and never got near a small road again (except when we deliberately set the GPS back into Mountain Bike mode for fun).

We got to Cirencester and started driving around. We followed what we thought was the main road, but it bent to the left and narrowed dramatically. Suddenly after 40 yards we found ourselves in a dead end filled with parked cars and no way to turn around. I started backing out and looking for somewhere to turn around. There was a narrow driveway on our right and I decided to back into it then pull forward the way we had come. Mike offered to get out and guide me, but I said no. About half way through in I heard a scrape and pulled back out a bit and tried again. This time we made it but when we checked, I'd scraped a corner of the bumper pretty good. I don't know if I hit the wall or a trash can that I hadn't seen, but it bugged me allot. I should have let Mike get out but I was feeling pretty good about my driving and my arrogance got the better of me.

Later Mike checked the insurance he'd bought on the car. It fully covered any damage with no deducatable. So we could drop off the keys and not have to worry about the scrape. That's why we got the insurance, but it still bugs me.

Cirencester was another big town and wasn't very fun. It was getting late in the afternoon, but we decided to try one more town. A little village nearby named Bibury. It wasn't many miles away and we arrived near 5:00.

Bibury was a small village set along the banks of a big stream. The first thing we noticed was some sort of pond and park setup. It turned out to be a trout farm with a small store attached. The farm tours were closed but we looked around the store, then crossed the stream to a big pub to see about dinner. The restauraunt didn't open for quite a while yet so we followed the stream down through town. It was very quiet and tranquil. If I had my wish, I'd love to bring my wife back to stay in that Pub/Inn and enjoy the quiet of the town.

We found the village church and a series of huts that the guide book say has been there for hundreds of years. We walked past the row of homes and out through a path just in the edge of the trees parallel to the stream. It was a very quite and relaxing place.

We got back in the car as the sun was setting and headed for Cardiff. The GPS took us down an A road to M4, then across the Severne bridge. Traffic was heavy but not too bad until we got into Cardiff. We hit allot of stop and go traffic as we got off the M to make our way into town.

We found the Marriot hotel pretty easy, then went out looking for something to eat. We found a modern restaurant in a very swank part of town. It was delicious but I think we both wished we'd stayed in Bibury and waited for the Pub to open.

Stonehenge

Mike and I at Stonehenge

The Whole of Stone Henge

Me listening to my audio tour at Stonehenge

Some of the countryside while driving to Yate

More of the British countryside near Yate

Mike getting a panoramic photo.  Notice we aren't on a main road, that'll be important soon

Me in Yate at 47 Blaisdon

Me at 47 Blaisdon in 1980

The Flat we occupied in Stroud in 1980.

Painswick

Painswick Cemetery

British Lawnmower in Painswick

AppleGarth in Painswick (but not the one I remember)

Looking from Painswick across to the other hills

Looking back at Painswick from the tiny road on the other hills

View from the tiny road out of Painswick

Another view from the tiny road

The Bibury pub/inn

Looking across a field and stream at Bibury

Looking back up the stream at Bibury

The row of old homes in Bibury

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England "Guys Trip" Day 3

On Tuesday we packed up and checked out of the hotel, then took a cab to the paddington train station. We got tickets for to Bath, then looked around for somewhere to get something to eat. We settled on a convenience store with milk and doughnuts. I also bought a thankyou card to mail back to Randi for last night's meal and hospitality.

Our train was late leaving so we wandered around the train station. 4 years ago my wife and I came to London and stayed in a hotel near Paddington. On the day we went home, we checked our luggage at a British Airways counter in the train station, but that has gone away now.

Our train left 20 minutes late. We had stop in a few cities on the way to Bath. I pulled out the GPS to see what our route was like, and to see how fast we were going. The train got up to 125 miles per hour at times, which is why the train is called the One-Two-Five.

From the Bath train station we got a cab over to our hotel. We checked in then walked around the City and made our way towards the Roman Baths. Bath isn't very big. We were only 3/4 of a mile from all of the shopping and touristy things. We took pictures of the Cathedral, then headed into the Baths for another self guided tour. The museum has been upgraded and expanded allot since I was last here in 1981. There is more detail about how the baths were created and what their significance was.

My favorite part was that people used to take small metal scraps and write out curses or favors that they wanted from the gods, then throw them into the hot water spring. The archeologists have found allot of these and had some in an exhibit case with their translations. I remember one that someone wanted a curse on whoever stole his sandals while he was in the baths.

I always remember the big parks in Bath. I was in the nearby town of Trowbridge in 1981 during the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Dianna. So when we would go to Bath, there would be huge arrangements of plants and flowers celebrating the wedding. The park I remember was closed for cleaning so we just looked through the gates then headed back to hotel and then lunch.

For lunch we walked away from city center and up the hill. We found a place caled "The Hole" or something like that. It was a small restaurant and we were the only ones in it. That's usually a recipe for disaster, but it was pretty good. As we were leaving, Mike asked why no one was there at 1:00 and the waitress said people usually come a bit later, and sure enough, a group came just before we left.

On the way back to the hotel we passed the Jane Austin museum. My daughters all love "Pride and Prejudice" so we stopped in. I bought a few things to bring back for Koren, but we decided not to take the tour (Yawn).

We spent a while walking through the shopping areas looking for a little chocolate shop that I used to love to buy some sort of treats at. I remember they were coated in powdered sugar and had some sort of nut or something crunchy in them. The whole shopping area has been rebuilt and looks nothing like I remember it, but we did find a good chocolate shop that had what I remember. It's called Alpini.

At one point during the day we stopped by a convenience store to buy something to drink, and while we were there I saw some white chocolate malted milk balls. My daughter Klair doesn't like regular chocolate, she likes white chocolate. So I bought some to see if they were any good. They were delicious, but since we still had 5 days to go, I figured I'd buy some later. Little did I know that we'd search quite a bit and never find any until we were at the airport in Paris. So I did buy 4 big bags of them to bring home to Klair.

For dinner, we had spotted an Indian restaurant. We ordered allot different dishes that came in small portions.

We thought about going to a movie since we had seen a large new cinema in town, but nothing seemed worth the effort.

Me in front of Bath Cathedral

Stanley on the upper deck of the Roman Baths

The Roman Baths

Flat Stanely on a Roman Mosaid

"The Circus" - A famous circle of homes in Bath

The Circus

The Circus - you can see where they've been cleaning the sandstone

Mike out in the middle getting a panoramic picture

England "Guys Trip" Days 1 and 2

In the first part of 2007, my friend Mike called me. He said that he had allot of frequent flyer miles and wanted to go on a trip somewhere and wanted to know if I'd go with him. He offered to use his miles to pay my airfare. We talked for a while about where to go. Mike was originally thinking about Hawaii, but I'm taking my wife there in 6 months for our 25th anniversary.

Through RCI I could get decent lodgings in Mexico or Brazil, but neither of us speak spanish, and neither have any travel experience, so in the end, we decided to go to England and France.

Just a few days before we were to leave, a letter arrived from some friends in Arizona. Their daughter's class had read a book about "Flat Stanley". They wanted to know if we would take their daughter's Flat Stanley to a few places around Colorado Springs and take pictures. I had no idea what the story was, but I was willing to take it with me to England and take pictures.

We flew out early in March of 2007. Mike from Salt Lake, me from Denver, and we met up in Cincinnati for the crossing to London. Mike has pretty high status with Delta, so we went into the Delta lounge to wait for our flight. As we boarded the plane, we each took a sleeping pill. I had purchased a set of active noise reducing ear phones which reduced the airplane noise by about half. We slept all the way to London so that as we got off the plane, it really did feel like morning. We didn't suffer from jetlag much except when we stayed up really late.

We arrived on a Sunday. We checked into our Mariotte hotel, then took the underground down to Portabello Road in Notting Hill. Most places were closed. We wandered the shops looking at fake antiques (and maybe the occasional real antique). For lunch we found Pakistani fast food. It was a small buffet with chicken, rice, and a sort of curry. It was different and good.

Next we headed for Covent Gardens. That's a large covered shopping area. I found a nice telescope to buy for Kyle. We saw allot of "Guys Suck" tee-shirts that Kadi and Klair would have liked. In the end I bought them T-shirts with velcro on the front and letters to stick on so they could make their own sayings.
I looked for a "Beckham" soccer jersey for my grandson, but he's not very popular in England right now. In fact when I mentioned that my 4 month old grandson was named Beckham, the guy just shook his head and muttered something about stupid Yanks.

Next we took the underground down by Parliment. We took a few pictures by Big Ben,

I told Mike about the little paper doll, but I couldn't remember the name. I pulled out the paper doll and Mike held it up while I took photos. While we were taking the photos a group walked past and someone chuckled and said "Look, they have a Flat Stanley". That was my first indication that Stanley was a worldwide thing.

We walked around the streets a bit. But because it's Sunday we didn't get to go into many things. We walked around Picadilly Circus. I noticed that the theatres were just opening a new movie called "The Comeback", but in the US, the movie is called "Music and Lyrics". I'd never known that many movies carry different titles in Europe.

That night Mike wanted to go to the oldest continuing restauraunt in London. http://www.rules.co.uk/ The name of the restaurant is Rules. It was established in 1798 and has continued to run since then. The food was is very basic british, and it's very good. Mike ordered a whole Yorkshire pudding to try, but it was so big we didn't finish it. We did buy small bottles of soda which cost about $5.00 each.

Day 2 - Monday

On Monday we started with a $40.00 breakfast at the Mariotts. I hadn't stayed in many Marriots before, so I thought the breakfast was complimentary. Imagine my suprise when they handed Mike a bill for over 20 pounds. I figured we didn't need breakfast in the hotel anymore. Our first stop for the day was the London Harley Davidson store to buy t-shirts. Those were also expensive, and Mike told me just to think of it as "Pounds for Dollars", even though a pound is worth almost twice as much as a dollar. So that 12 pound T-shirt was really a 24 dollar T-shirt.

After the Harley Shop we went into Westminster Cathedral. They don't allow any photography. We got audible tour devices and walked around. Every hour they stop all touring and give a prayer, and every 2 hours they hold a religious service at one end of the Cathedral. At one end sits the official corrination throne of England. It's just a fairly plain wooden chair with allot of grafiti on it. In years past, the chair just sat in a corner and anyone who wanted could sit in it and even write or carve their name in it, and they did.
We started looking for somewhere to eat, and a guard at Westminster recommended the Methodist Hall across the street. It was crowded and didn't look that great so we started wandering around.

We found a small pub near Westminster to have lunch. We descended a narrow staircase to the basement and set it a cramped booth. We kept waiting for a waitress until the bar tender told us we had to order at the bar. We got plain pub food with fish & chips & beans. It was pretty good.

After lunch we went to the Winston Churchill museum. http://churchillmuseum.iwm.org.uk/ It is in the underground Cabinet War Rooms that Churchill used throughout World War II and includes allot of the original equipment, maps, and furniture. There is also a very sophisticated computerized tables where you can look at Churchill's life day by day and see what he was doing and how the war was going. The tour of the museum is done via an electronic recording that you punch in a number and hold to your ear.

After the museum we went to Harrods to shop for some gifts to bring back home. I found a neat Dr Who doll to bring back for my 3 year old granddaughter Sydnee. Koren hates that Rex and I have gotten Sydnee hooked on Dr Who so the doll with a little K9 robot doll are a perfect gift.

For dinner we took the tube out to a suburb of London. Right by the tube station was a little flower shop so I decided to buy flowers. The shop owner didn't have a magnetic stripe reader to use my credit card. She said she hadn't seen a mag stripe card in several years. Everything in Europe has switched to embedded chips in the credit cards. Luckily we had enough cash to buy the flowers.

After that, we got a cab out to the retirement flat of a lady that I know named Randi. She made a wonderful salad and lamb dinner for us. We chatted for several hours about my family and hers.

I'm not sure why I didn't take many pictures those first 2 days, but I didn't.

Sitting in the Delta lounge at the Cincinnati airport waiting to fly to London

Sitting in the Delta lounge at the Cincinnati airport waiting to fly to London

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliment

Flat Stanley with a Double Decker bus and Big Ben in the background

Me in front of Westminster Cathedral

Me with Randi in her flat